Life Crises
by Clarity1
Summary: Three POV's for the end of the season
1. Quarter Life Crisis

Title: Quarter Life Crisis  
  
Author: Clarity  
  
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.  
  
Summary: Three points of view at the end of 'Peace Out'. Part one-Connor  
  
Rating: PG-13, but only for language  
  
Spoilers: 'Peace Out', obviously; also, much of the past two seasons of Angel  
  
Author's Notes: I hate Joss Whedon sometimes. He's taken two great shows and bogged them down with awful plot twists and done horrible things to the characters until I can barely watch. And then he pulls something like he did to poor Buffy, last Tuesday, or the scene with Connor raging at Cordelia's side last night, and I'm reminded of why I ever subscribed to 'Joss is God' anyway. I was trying to do my homework after Angel. At 9:20, I threw down my pen in frustration, opened up MSWorks, and typed this all out in one sitting. Enjoy.  
"It's over."  
  
'It's over,' he said. How can he say that to me? How can he possibly look me in the face and tell me that it's over?  
  
He doesn't understand. He couldn't understand. He's never been like me, never had to look around and realize that the world is pointless. No, that's not it. He knows. He knows there's nothing, but he won't admit it, none of them will! They just keep grabbing at excuses to fight, to give them something to live for.  
  
But why? If all there is is violence, is fighting, if life is blood and blood is death, if the only reason we're born is just to die, then why even bother living? There's nothing here for me, not really. Cordelia...but she's in a coma. Still, as though she's dead. She was the only one who ever made any of it worth it, and she might as well be dead for all she's here for me.  
  
Selfish. She's lying there in a coma, and I'm thinking about her not being there for me. But...damnit, why can't I want her to be? She's the only one that ever was...her and Holtz, and he's dead, and that all turned out so well, didn't it? He cared about me, or said he did, and...I don't know what to think about any of that any more. I don't think about him much any more, or I try not to. He wasn't my father, Angel is, Angel says he is, even though he's a demon, he was never there, even though he doesn't understand me. Even though he doesn't know a damn thing about me.  
  
I thought I understood, for a while, when Cordelia told me she was going to have a baby. I thought I might get it, a little--what Angel was supposed to feel, even if he didn't, if he doesn't, or what Holtz felt while I was growing up, before we came here and everything got...complicated. Parents love their children. It's a rule, isn't it? There was going to be a baby, and I was going to protect it, going to try to save it from this crazy, damned world that's full of blood and fighting where the only reason anyone ever does anything is for themselves, where you have to create a reason to even exist, where you have to go looking for a fight, for a problem to fix, just so you can have the credit of fixing it. I hate it, I hate it! But there was going to be a baby, and I was going to make it better for the baby, make her life good, make her happy, make Cordelia happy, I was going to fix it so there was something more than the night forever without the sun. Only Angel, he's the one that brought the sun back. But the point is, I wanted to protect them. I wanted to make it right.  
  
And then she was born, and I didn't need to. She was going to protect me. She made it right, she made everything right. Everyone else...there was a purpose, finally, something more than fighting, and if she looked like a four-day-old corpse, so what? So what? She was my daughter, mine and Cordelia's daughter, and I loved her just for that. She was going to make the world better, good, make it matter. She was going to make it something more than just life is blood is death.  
  
It's not fair! It shouldn't be like this! Why can't the world be like she was going to make it, like she said it would be, why can't there be a purpose like that, why can't it all be to just love people? Why can't we all just belong? Why don't I belong?  
  
I don't ever belong!  
  
It's not fair it's not fair it's not fair. Why don't I get to belong? Why did I have to be special? Why did I have to be the 'miracle child' of two vampires raised in a demon dimension? Why don't I understand this world? Everyone here, they all seem to get it, they all seem to understand why. Is it because I didn't grow up here? Is there something, some secret message parents are supposed to tell their children when they're growing up that I just never got told? I grew up fighting, I know it, I can, I'm good at it, so why isn't it enough for me like it is for them? It's pointless, it's a lie, a worthless lie, but just blindly following and doing what someone else says, just blindly trusting, that's worse, isn't it? They're both wrong, they're both pointless, it doesn't matter! None of it matters, why doesn't he see that? How can he look at me, how can he look at me like that?  
  
"I'm just happy to have you." Just to have me? He doesn't, he never did, I don't belong to him, I didn't belong to her. Maybe he is my father, maybe he wants to be, like he said he does, but he doesn't understand me and he's not my father any more than I was Jasmine's. She was all ready grown up when I met her, she didn't need me to protect her, she wasn't mine and everything she said was a lie, another lie, another lie about the point of it all that just doesn't exist!  
  
And if I can do that, if I can have a daughter that I met when she was all grown up, and I could...could kill her, like the demon she was, they're all demons, aren't they, people, I look around and everywhere there's fire and darkness. It's just like when the sun went out, the shouting and the rioting in the streets, and everywhere the scent of blood. But if I could do that to her and bring this back, then how can he say he wants to take care of me? How can he be anything for me? He didn't raise me, he never had me, never loved me, never understood me, so how can I be anything to him at all? How can he be glad to have me when I was never his, not really, when I was mine before I ever even met him?  
  
And he doesn't understand that, does he? That look in his eyes...like he wanted me to be his, like he wanted to protect me and make it okay. And I almost...God, I wanted to. I wanted to let him. He brought the sun back. And maybe his life, the way he gives himself meaning, maybe all the fighting is a lie, but it's not worse than hers, where everyone just follows blindly and never questions, never thinks, never is. Because... because what do I have that's mine? Weapons break, clothes tear, get ruined, this body, it gets injured, gets hurt, I'm going to get old, but these thoughts, they're mine. They're mine, even Jasmine couldn't take them from me, but she took them from everybody else and that's worse. So what Angel does, what he's after, the way he's always, he and they are always running after a reason to fight, maybe it's all a lie, but it's better than hers, and I couldn't buy into hers any more.  
  
All I want is truth, but I can't find it! Angel thinks he has it, he thought he did, I could see it in his eyes when he was talking to me. He wanted to take care of me, and for just a minute I thought maybe. Maybe it is a lie, but it's closer to the truth, it's the only thing I've found so far, and maybe it would be nice to have someone try to protect me for a change. But it's wrong. Maybe it's a better lie, maybe they even all believe it, but it's still a lie. I knew it as soon as he said it was over.  
  
It's never over. Even I know that. No matter how many demons you kill, they always keep coming. I lived in Quor'goth, I know that, I've lived that, it's never over! How can that be a purpose? If you never win, if you're never done, if you can't ever achieve what you're working for, how can it be worth working for in the first place? If it can't be done why bother? It's never over, it will never be over. We thought it was over when the sun came out, when Jasmine came to us, we thought the fighting was over, that there was a reason and a purpose and a place. I thought I was going to belong. I thought the fight was over, that both of them were, fighting the demons and the darkness, and fighting to find a reason and a place. I thought finally, maybe, we could have won. But we didn't. And we never will. It's never over, it's never going to be over, and so why bother? We live these pointless little lives full of violence and blood and pain, and then we die, and we never get anywhere. Revenge doesn't do any good, it never does, fighting doesn't, but what else is there? I know they haven't found it, they don't know, but who else do I ask? Holtz' purpose was revenge. I thought once, maybe, it was me, but it was revenge. And Angel's is his redemption, I know that, his precious redemption. But none of it means anything. None of it, none of it, so why bother?  
  
She asked me if I still loved her, and I did, I do, she's mine, she was my Jasmine mine and Cordy's, but she just gave the world another lie and it was even worse than the one it's trying to live on now and what else could I do?  
  
But now what? Fire in the streets and people shouting and rioting and screaming, and why? What for? Why bother?  
  
Why do I have to be the only person asking these questions? If there was someone else...anyone else who asked, who wondered why, but they don't. They're all so secure in their little fight, because it's enough for them, if they just keep fighting they don't have time to ask if it's worth it if they never actually win. They don't ask, but I do, and I don't fit. I've never fit, and I'm never going to fit. If it weren't so lonely, maybe it would be better. If I'd thought for an instant that he really understood me, that he really knew, I would have gone to him. But he doesn't. He doesn't have me, and I don't have him, or her, or Cordy, or anything. I'm just empty. And alone, and...I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I should...I don't know, find somewhere quiet, I guess, get out of the streets, stop wandering around until all the rioting is over. Keep myself in one piece until it's over. That's what Angel would do, what he'd ask me to do. He's in his hotel now, I'll bet, keeping an eye on the windows until the streets have cleared. And that'll mean it's over, to him, things are back to normal, like that's a good thing. He doesn't get it, this, here, even when it's not on the streets it's here. This is exactly what he does, the fighting, the blood, the fire. No, it's different when it's in his sewers and when it's demons instead of humans. He's just going to hole up and wait, and it's going to be over soon.  
  
Maybe that's what he thinks about me, too. He's a vampire, he's going to live forever. If he just waits it out, all of it, Cordelia, his friends, me, all the trouble I've put him through, it's all just going to go away eventually. It's all just going to be over. Maybe that's what he thinks. But he's wrong. He's wrong, doesn't he see that? Why can't he see that even after I'm dead, after all of his friends are dead, even in a thousand years, he's still going to be running around in that stupid coat fighting? I'm glad I'm not a vampire. I couldn't live forever. Sometimes I don't think I'm going to stay sane living through the day. Sometimes I wish it would just end, but I know better. Even if I die, that's not going to be the end, not in this world. Holtz was religious; I know about the afterlife. And Hell is real, I grew up there. Even if I died, it wouldn't do any good. Nothing does any good. I wish someone, anyone, could get that.  
  
He doesn't understand.  
  
It's never over. 


	2. Mid Life Crisis

Title: Mid-Life Crisis  
  
Author: Clarity  
  
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.  
  
Summary: Three points of view at the end of 'Peace Out'. Part two-Wesley  
  
Rating: PG, but only for language  
  
Spoilers: 'Peace Out', obviously; also, much of the past two seasons of Angel  
  
Author's Notes: After writing the last part, I just had to add to it. Period two was supposed to be time to catch up on all the late work we have to turn in before graduation--guess what I did instead? At this rate, I'll get part three, 'Unlife Crisis', out by tomorrow night. Enjoy.  
I'm looking out the door at the streets, and they're all full of blood and fire and screaming. And all I can think is, we did this. This is our fault. We gave up, didn't give up, _destroyed_ world peace. For this.  
  
We meant well. How I loathe those words now. I meant well, everybody, calling the Council when Faith killed a man. I meant well, Angel, giving Connor over to Holtz. We meant well, world, destroying universal peace and prosperity. Of course, we may have just paved the road to Hell, but what else could we do?  
  
What could I have done? What am I supposed to do? I can't. I don't know. I'm not what my father wanted, I'm not good enough for the Council, for my slayer, for Angel. I can't do what they want of me, I don't know how, I don't know what I'm supposed to do! In all my books, my scrolls, my prophecies full of ancient wisdom, you'd think _someone_ would have thought to add, just as a footnote, the point of it all. If all we ever do is fail, is try and fail and loose Faith and Fred and Lilah, then why am I to even bother trying?  
  
I gave up paradise for this. For a few, shining, beautiful days, I wasn't failing. I was good enough just as me, she loved us and we loved her and we loved each other and that was enough. For once, the good intentions were _enough_. Why can't they be? Why does it seem that everything we try to make better just gets made worse?  
  
We could have stayed. We could have stayed with her, like Connor, despite the lifting of the illusion--I refuse to believe that we are, that I am, so shallow that Jasmine's hideous appearance would truly be enough to turn us all from what she said if it were real. She owned our thoughts; the mere suggestion that she were wrong was unthinkable. That is her power, was her power, not the illusion. Our own thoughts. She didn't just devour human flesh, human blood, she made our words mean nothing. My thoughts are my words are mine, and I will pay in blood to keep them.  
  
And apparently we have, because they're rioting like they did when the sun went out. If Angel used her name to defeat her...blood set our thoughts free to bring the word back through a blood sacrifice, halting her words and spilling our blood and it's all one and the same. Fire at night, shadows at day, blood that speaks and words that bleed, and none of it, none of it is ever enough. Prophecy words speak of blood. Blood spills because of words. But the words never speak of words, do they: Never of thoughts that will _stop_ the blood, because to stop the blood is to stop the thoughts and the words, and even still it takes blood. Blood to stop the bleeding, because words don't, 'I'm sorry' doesn't, there is no magic word to stop it. But if blood is words and words mean nothing then neither does the blood, and that's all there is, blood that at once is life and death, because one is the other. To live is to die, and the whole human race is doomed to it, and not even Jasmine could stop that, she hadn't the power even if she wanted to.  
  
There's fire in the dark and shadows from the sun, and it never stops, and no words or blood or any power can stop it. Nothing will ever make it right, which I suppose is how we should have _known_ Jasmine was wrong. Nothing is that easy. The apocalypse, this one, it's decayed into our normal blood and fire, but it's no different from hers, it flows just as red and it won't stop until it flows itself out. And this city...this bloody, bloody city, and God alone knows if I mean that as a curse or a description, it has enough blood in its rotting heart to keep it going, and nothing will fix it, nothing will make it better, no amount of good intentions and words will stop the sluggish blood flow.  
  
Lord, I feel like I should be quoting Eliot, with all the symbolism flying around here, the city and the blood and all of it pointing to death and that death never fixing a thing. All right, 'This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.' Only he's wrong, it doesn't. Maybe one day, it will be the apocalypse that slips under our guard to get us, but I doubt it, we rush in with our clash-bang and it _never_ ends. Never. If it did, it would be a whimper, but now _is_ the bang, again and again, and no word or blood can quell its destruction. So we've bled it all out and we're hollow men in this great faceless City of angels and devils, but we've nothing left to fix it with. Better the bang of pain and life than our whimper apocalypse, but we spend all our blood and speak all our words just trying to stem the tide that will never stop coming. And we can't stop fighting it as long as it does, but we haven't the power left to stop it forever so long as we're fighting it. We can't let it go because then we loose it all, because as much as we give to stop it at least it's ours to give--but she made it so easy when we didn't have to fight.  
  
But then, what would we have if we stopped? What do I have besides weapons and demon-lore? It's all I am, and it takes all of me, but it's not enough, it's never _enough_! Nothing, nothing is ever enough--but, damn it, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep giving and taking and none of it will be enough but it will be all I have so, pointless and hollow or not, I'll grab at my straw life and spew my pitiful words anyway, because once again I've no choice or free will, but this time it isn't Jasmine it's the whole bloody world itself that forces me.  
  
It's all I have.  
  
It's never enough.  
End note--The poem Wesley quotes is 'The Hollow Men', by T.S. Eliot. It's very good, but also very depressing, so read it, but don't be looking for the feel-good poem of the year. Eliot tends to center a lot on the decay of modern society, and two of his main symbols are the city and blood, hence Wesley bringing him up. Also, the later refrences to 'straw life' and, of course, hollowness are further allusions to the poem. 


	3. UnLife Crisis

Title: UnLife Crisis  
  
Author: Clarity  
  
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.  
  
Summary: Three points of view at the end of the season. Part three-Angel  
  
Rating: PG-13, but only for language  
  
Spoilers: 'Home'; also, much of the past two seasons of 'Angel'  
  
Author's Note: I meant to get this part out earlier, but the lightning bolt of inspiration that produced the first two sort of...fizzled. That is, until I saw tonight's episode. So this is Angel's POV, but not for 'Peace Out', for the end of the season finale, 'Home'. It had to be done.  
The limo's waiting, but I don't care. Let it wait. I'm the boss, they can wait. They can wait for me to finish standing here in the dark with my eyes closed. For once, one thing, one thing, can fit itself to me, instead of me fixing things for other people.  
  
Why is it that the one thing that always destroys the ones I love is me? Always, all the way from the beginning, I watch other people and other things get destroyed because that's the way the world works and I can handle it, but my people, my family, the ones I love, I'm the one that destroys them. I'm the one that ruins it. My sister, my little sister...he's got one now. He's got a family that's so much like mine used to be that it hurts almost as much as seeing him so happy without me. Everything I once had that made me happy is in that room, except for the girl I'm going to see once I finally go back to the limo, and I destroyed it all myself. My son, my lover, my family...and what I wouldn't give to have it back.  
  
I named him after my father, 'Connor'. My father...God, I hated him. I spent my whole life so, so sure I hated him, because he wouldn't give me the freedom I wanted to throw my life away. Not completely different than Jasmine, actually--peace, success, and all you have to do is give away that pesky little thing called free will. Why do humans always choose what's bad for them? Why is evil so seductive? Why...I know why I went to Wolfram and Hart. Connor. For him, in the end, all for him. This is for him. But why them? 'What were the odds it would be the humans who were the corruptible ones?' Why do people go back to destruction and chaos until it seems like the only thing you can do to save someone is take away their choice?  
  
Would he have picked this, if he had the choice? He's so happy. He has everything he ever wanted, in there, in the light, where his father is drinking red wine out of that glass instead of red blood and his little sister looks at him with those adoring eyes like he's her angel. It was the only thing I could give him, and it was the right thing. I think it was the right thing. It was right, now, it was right, just like it was right to leave Buffy in Sunnydale, but if it were really the right thing we wouldn't have spent that first year running back and forth to each others' cities, and I wouldn't have to be going there right now, because if it was the right thing to leave she wouldn't be needing me. So how can I know it's the right thing to take his choice away from him?  
  
He's innocent in there, I get that, I spent a hundred plus years destroying innocence, I know it when I see it. But...God, what next? He can't even protect himself anymore. I know he was dying the way he was, but maybe I could have fixed it. I couldn't give him the light, but the Connor that was mine knew how to survive the dark. So is it worth it? Yeah, he's got his happy life. He's got his family. He's got his truth in there. And what happens when he goes off to his fancy college in his big city and runs into a bunch of vampires one night? When a werewolf or a pack of them decides these woods are perfect hunting territory and he doesn't have a clue how to fight them off? Or even when he runs into another bunch of humans that destroyed themselves and got themselves seduced and their own innocence destroyed by evil? He's innocent, but he's defenseless. How did I have the right to make that choice for him?  
  
I didn't know him. That's what he was always saying, and I don't know a lot about teenagers, but I remember enough from when I was his age and Buffy was his age to realize that every kid thinks that about their parent. And maybe I didn't. I saw...there was so much of me in him. I thought I could give him all of the good and none of the bad, the strength without the pain, and then I realized I couldn't, but I figured we could still connect, because looking around at the darkness and knowing, knowing that there's not a thing you can do to fix it, that's been me for a century now. So I was sure, so sure that I knew him. That I knew what he was thinking. That I could make this choice for him.  
  
Except that if it had been for me? I'd still be where I am right now, standing out here in the dark, thinking about vampires in alleys and werewolf packs in the woods. I would have chosen this. So why did I think I could choose for him? Why did I put him in there, in the light and the warm and the innocence? What gave me that right?  
  
No! I'm his father. I am his father, or I was when I made that decision. It is my job to decide what is best for my son. So I will take away his free choice, I will make him hate me, I will make him not even know who I am, but he's happy. He's not happy with me, and maybe he could have been. Maybe, if I had known him the way I thought I did. Maybe I could have given him what he wanted, made him believe that I wasn't lying when I said I loved him. I have all this power now...I can do this. I can make him happy. I can even have the light, I can stand in the sun, but I couldn't give it to him the way he deserved. I don't know how. So I did this.  
  
The universe really does love irony. Two hundred years, four periods without a soul, countless numbers of innocents and demons dead at my hands, no heartbeat, no reflection, and I've still become my father.  
  
I wonder how they picked the name, how they think they did. The family in there, raising glasses of wine the color of blood in a toast to their son, to my son, damnit, to my son who once again doesn't even know he's my son, who grew up without knowing his father and now doesn't even know who his father is. Yet more irony, I finally prove to him that I love him and he doesn't even remember me to realize it. He thinks that man in there with the blood red wine is his father and maybe he's right. Maybe it's better this way. I hope it is.  
  
Hope. Hope, God, what a stupid word. Entertaining the possibility that something good might be. Yeah. Something good might _always_ be, and so might something bad, and it's not about hoping, it's about going out there and making it be the good thing. It's not about thinking that someday the world is going to be the way it should be, it's about making a deal with the devil so that it is, right now, for that boy in there who's going to the college of his choice next year. So maybe I screwed up. I do that. So sue me. I just became owner of the LA branch of a huge law firm. I'll win.  
  
Yeah, I screw up, but I'm not going to just stick around here in the shadows and hope that the boy in there never has to come back out here and find the thing that nearly destroyed him last time. I'm going to get in that limo and go back to the last place I had to leave someone I loved to protect them from me, and save her. I'm going to do something about my screw-up. And then I'm going to go back to LA and find out why everyone else was so ready to accept Wolfram and Hart's offer, and I'm not going to sit around hoping that the evil lawyers have given up on us. I'm going to figure out what they're up to, and I'm going to stop them.  
  
Or else I'm not. I don't know. I might screw up. I've done that in the past, case in point, Darla-Connor-Holtz-Stephen-Justine-Wesley-Cordy-Jasmine. I used to be human, they have a tendency for it. I don't know. I don't know my son, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what Wolfram and Hart is up to, I don't know whether I should be going to Sunnydale or not, and I don't know what's going to happen next. It's probably going to be bad. It's always bad, one way or another. No matter what you pick, what choice or change you make, it's always bad. But I'm going to keep choosing and changing things, because the world is like that, and even if I have no idea what I'm doing it's my job to do it. Maybe I shouldn't be making any decisions, but someone has to, so I'm making them executive. There's always a choice, always, so I make the choice, and I do what I have to do. As far as I know all the local omniscient beings are dead, so no one's got the right to be telling me which way to choose. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a lot of things.  
  
It's never certain. 


End file.
